Hey everyone! I’m making this post just to share my experience switching from iPhone to grapheneos. My experience may be a little different than others, because I was already using all open source apps if possible, so moving apps wasn’t horrible.(only took me like 2 days.) Moving my imsg contacts to signal fucking sucks though. Especially when they say no, and you gotta coax them ugh.
To be honest apple’s iOS 26 HORRENDOUS FUCKING DESIGN LANGUAGE in conjunction with a recent exploit that forced me to update or I would get malware was the primary reason for updating. I can’t even express how badly iOS 26 fucked up my phone. Along with that i was tired of dealing with issues from side loading. It felt so delicate, and it broke at any minor change. The amount of issues I had with sidestore were absurd.
The general iPhone to android switch wasn’t too bad. I prefer material ui over ios 26 and maybe a little more than iOS 18’s. Back on my iPhone I had icloud, so deleting apps wouldn’t wipe its data and it pissed me off so much sometimes. Being able to press clear data or cache was such insane peace of mind. The large app selection(even considering FOSS only) is also super nice.
The one thing that annoys me a lot about grapheme is alarms. All my profiles can’t run in background, so I have to switch to owner so I can set an alarm before sleeping. (I have auto restart, so it always goes to owner in the morning.) Oh wait actually I think of more. Lower battery life than my iphone, notifications being used for persistence, file transfer troubles over cable, and having to use 3 Mullvad VPN devices, 1 for each of my profiles. If anyone knows how to use one Mullvad device across all my profiles, please let me know. Also I’m not used to the keyboard at all.
As said earlier, me not being apple pilled or being anymore than one layer into their ecosystem made switching easy as pie. Man I remember the first time I saw that graphene boot screen on a fresh pixel I felt so cool; the first boot home screen is genuinely so clean. Just staring at that black wallpaper with 4 apps is just so calming i don’t know. Although I switched to kiss launcher(its fucking perfect), I still like going to that original homescreen to look sometimes.
I would say in general the greatest boon of switching was peace of mind. My phone did what was documented and what the apps I chose did. On my old phone I couldn’t trust anything. Gosh, its so nice! If anyone was interested in purchasing a device I hope my experience was interesting to you. Attached is a photo of my homescreen, if anyone is interested.
Sorry about messy grammar or ordering of information. I kinda rushed to make this post
I’ve recently switched too, from iPhone 15 pro to pixel 10 pro. I’d also spent a few weeks slowly swapping out iOS apps for as many Foss as possible. I’m still fumbling my way around GOS, but mostly love it. I loathe iOS 26. Seriously wtf was that? I’m finding battery life better on the pixel, I like the Foss and android apps better. I enjoy using a bare minimum of Google apps without allowing them access to everything. If I could ditch them altogether I would, but my travel apps wouldn’t work without Google play.
For profiles, I ended up with bare minimum on my daily driver, including Gplay and travel stuff. I put my socials (decentralised only) and book apps on a separate profile. This adds a layer to access these, which helps reduce time on them.
I haven’t had a chance to play with camera apps yet, and I need to try different keyboards as I’m not loving the GOS one.
A minor complaint is not being able to send emoji reactions to text messages. I know, I know, privacy is more important than emojis. But I like annoying my husband with exploding unicorns every now and then.
Anyone thinking of changing, do it! I’m a tech noob and it was really easy to switch. Just takes a bit of research to get your head around it all.
I need to try different keyboards as I’m not loving the GOS one
Considering it sends anything and everything to Google servers then yes, you should.Ignore it I read the name wrong
GrapheneOS keyboard sends to Google?
No
Whoopps, my bad, ai read it as Google Keyboard. I can blame not having my first coffee for the brain fog.
One tip for persistant notifications, if you long press on it and go to settings then drill down through 2 or 3 screens there’s an option to minimise. It makes it smaller on the notifications drawer and doesn’t show on the starus bar.
Still sucks that apps have to do this to run in background.
Thanks for the tip! I’ll try it out for sure.
The noteless app has not been updated since 2021, you should replace it. If you need something minimal check out notally, if not there are other feature rich apps that are actively maintained.
Thanks for letting me know. I’ll check out notally.
Have you tried heliboard as your keyboard? I hated default one.
I do use heliboard; however, I seem to always miss more keys compared to my iPhone. On my iPhone I didn’t even have autocorrect enabled, but here I need. It’s a matter of not being used to it.
I use this layout somebody on their GitHub made that is similar to the IOS keyboard. I tweak it a little but it’s a good starting point: https://github.com/HeliBorg/HeliBoard/discussions/2180
Try FUTO keyboard. Solved my problems
Futa keyboard
If anyone knows how to use one Mullvad device across all my profiles, please let me know.
If you’re using wireguard, or a wrapper that’s on top of wireguard, then you prob can. I’m not 100% sure about mobile, but I do that with desktop VMs. The limitation is, you can’t use more than one at the same time for a given PrivateKey. They let you have several PrivateKeys. I forgot the number, it’s like 5 or 6 or sth like that. You can share the PrivateKeys between devices or profiles as long as you won’t connect more than one at a time for each key.
issues from side loading
Totally not aiming this at you at all! But I hate this term side loading. It normalizes the idea that we should require permission from the co who made our device, to install and run s/w on it.
I’m all for having a process to check apps and try to safeguard against malicious ones. But that can happen without an iron fist.
I try to use “direct-install” or “adb-install” vs “google-install” for clarity.
The term “sideload” has been around a LONG time tho; sometimes its difficult to de-program muscle memory.
On terms of the Mullvad thing, I’ll check it out, but I don’t think it would work on owner profile, because it’s always running in background.
For the side loading thing, I agree with what youve saying but if I said download was annoying, people would be confused. Also if I’m being honest, I don’t think saying side loading vs not is the real issue compared to nornies not giving a fuck about privacy
It is. You have no idea how much power it has. It’s like calling Chat Control by its original name which makes it seem totally harmless.
Sideloading is objectively not the right term. It’s “installing”.
What phone did you put it on? I keeping finding myself unable to choose which pixel I should get.
The 8a has a modern curved design, still many years left of updates, is plenty fast, and has a nice screen and keyboard, all while being pretty cheap new or used
i just got the newest one. Excuse me if im wrong, but dont the older ones have shorter software update lifespans?
I dont think so, so you got a pixel 10. That’s helpful information.
Depending on your use case, you might prefer enabling the work profile for your main user rather than switching between 3 different phone users. Just download Insular in Fdroid and you can set it up.
I’ll try it out. Thanks for letting me know!
I just use the native android private space profile, good enough for my use case
Thanks for writing this post. I too am hoping to switch soon.
I’m glad my experience helped you out. I still remember frantically searching for videos other people’s experiences switching, but I ran out pretty quickly.
I’ve tried a second user a few times but found it annoying.
What I do is everything in one user. I disable any app that I need once in a while that doesn’t respect my privacy. For example, the Amazon app. I need this app (pin is not an option) to open their locker a few times per year. I leave it disabled until I’m standing in front of the locker.
Maybe you could try Orbot or the free tier of Protonvpn for some of your profiles instead of using three Mullvadvpn devices?
Protonvpn free tier could work, but Orbot download speeds are too slow.
Can I ask why would you need Signal and Molly? I use only Molly at the moment.
What does the File Manager app do? Is it the same as Files from GoS?
I’m almost positive that it’s Fossify File Manager .
My question as well. I like Molly for the database lock. Don’t need signal, and don’t get that silly donation reminder either.
I use signal and molly, because I originally made the switch by using molly emulating a signal desktop device, so I still needed the original app. I was kinda just too lazy to redo molly and remove signal. I should probably get that done lol.
As stated by the other guy commenting, that file manager app is fossify files. I find the ui excellent, atleast compared to the dogshit default files app
Profiles are nice and all, but remember, that there are still ways to track you across profiles (serious determination required), like the network stack being mostly shared. Here’s the thread.
If you truly need isolated apps, consider getting multiple phones. I personally have three devices for this. For example, my main device (where I actually use the web browser and which is connected to my private network) runs only a limited set of foss apps. This will solve the alarms issue as well as this device has only one profile.
I’m not this hardcore privacy. I wouldn’t say I really have a threat model or whatever. I just get all the privacy I have time for and I can get.
I’ll be taking this journey some time soon as well. Never had an android in my life but I very badly want Graphene. I already downloaded and have been trying out SimpleX as a messenger and have reached out to a few friends about using it when I ditch my iphone and they thankfully are open to it. Right now my only set back is saving up for a secondhand pixel while also trying to save for multiple other things that are a higher priority in the midst of things becoming more expensive. But thanks for this post. Glad to see another iphone user make the jump and hear what your experience has been.
Good luck with your switch!
Small question, but does GOS allow for an interface that’s more similar to the Apple and e/OS ones?
I know, to each their own, but personally I actually do like their interface.
That’s the launcher. There are a lot of launchers and some of them mimic iOS. You can choose which to use, as OP as chose Kiss launcher. /e/OS ships the Bliss Launcher.
deleted by creator
